


Tour Guide

by RatherOblivious



Category: Original Work
Genre: Bugs & Insects, Gen, Psychological Horror, Zoo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:46:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28380387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RatherOblivious/pseuds/RatherOblivious
Summary: It was the end to a workday, it was the end to a lot of things really





	Tour Guide

**Author's Note:**

> I was cleaning and found my story in a bag attempt from 2 years ago I think? and frankly it wasn't terrific but there was a core to it I liked so I pretty much rewrote it entirely and ended up with this piece that I really quite like.  
> It's been a minute but from the parts I have underlined in the original I had to use the opening line which I left unchanged, have a bus driver main character, take place in a zoo, be a horror story and feature a doomsday device which was pretty much completely removed.  
> I was really thrown off at the time by the first line honestly because it forced me to work in a pov and tense that I generally don't which really messed up the first draft but in the end after reworking most of it it brought a feeling to it that I really like

_ I thought I was invisible, I was wrong. _

They had known I was there the entire time, how couldn’t they when it was because of their machinations I was ever here in the first place. I had only been trying to do my job, unfortunately that seems like it might have been the problem from the start.

It had been an ordinary shift, or at least for me, at the time it had seemed to be. Just another day of driving disappointed tourists and unnecessarily loud children around the zoo while an outdated audio track played through the tinny bus speakers. Sure it was a shitty job and the other zoo staff came across either oddly dismissive or kind of aggressive though always just a tad bit  _ off  _ somehow but it paid decently and well I had to pay rent  _ somehow _ .

Honestly, though coworkers aside the strangest part of the job was the zoo itself. Established in the mid-fifties Dermaied Park hadn’t changed much over the decades. Everything blocky and just dulled around the edges and in corners, I always felt terrible for the animals I drove past on my rounds. Like the rest of the park they appeared rundown, appearing at times as if aging animatronics made of flesh instead of living creatures I knew them to be. Even though I’d been there for years that felt as if an eternity in a week and shared untold uncomfortable,  _ familiar in a way _ , lunches with their caretakers, like the zoo itself neither the humans nor creatures seemed to change with time. At times to my eyes if you ignored the minor jumps in technology that couldn’t be denied by management and a uniform overhaul in the mid-nineties it appeared that the exact same animals had been cared for by the same blank humans in their small concrete enclosures since opening day half a century ago today. I used to shake my head when the thought crossed my mind, it’s ridiculous, obviously that couldn’t be right.

The lions were the worst, every time I drove my sardine can of guests past I’d hold my breath, anticipation building in the back of my throat for an event just out of reach,  _ a memory  _ of sorts maybe, while they’d turn their heads as one to follow our crawling movements until we turned the corner out of sight. Everyday, without fail or variance, for years I’d do my rounds, the feel of unease growing steadily onward towards some unseen,  _ once before tread _ , peak. In brighter moments I’d joke to friends about it, the sincerity never managing to truly come across,  _ blurring together had I even tried at all _ ? In darker times, alone in my bed I’d foolishly wish that whatever this creeping event was would just happen already,  _ again _ , so I could be freed of the omnipresent dread.

I regretted that now as I pulled the rusting bus to a screeching stop, frost rushing over my body, knowledge etched  _ into my bones _ that that dreaded precipice had at last been reached,  _ returned to _ . I looked down towards the enclosure as I stepped out onto the crumbling concrete. The voices of confused and indignant passengers merging with the droning crackle of the onboard audio as both faded into buzzing _ familiar  _ static. Something drew me to the edge of the inset concrete, transfixed, bewitched almost _ , caught in memory _ , the lions necks followed me while the rest of them remained fixed in place, unmoving. Watching me, _ as they always had _ , I realized with muted horror staring towards their dark, unseeing, eyes.

I drew closer, pausing as I reached the end of the beaten pavement, I noticed movement oozing off of their manikin like forms. A darkness falling off them like a tide breaking across rocks,  _ an echo to my blood rushing _ , scattering down across the ground around unnatural forms. Something brushed against my ankle, a dull black beetle the size of a half-dollar coin, crawling over my faded sneaker to escape the enclosure below. More followed up the wall behind it streaming around me towards some unknown destination,  _ away from this site of tragedy _ . Possessed by the dread that had built up through,  _ seemingly endless _ , years I slid over the edge,  _ this inevitable moment _ , into the darkening pit below.

Sprawled out after hitting the ground I had a fleeting thought that that should have hurt, _ it had hurt the first time, _ although I then felt nothing. It was quickly chased away by the ever growing coverage of beetles around me and a faint unidentifiable, _ ever present _ , smell tugging on fragments of childhood memories.

I stood, slowly stumbling towards the still lions before me. One of them blinked slowly as the smell intensified and the beetles parted before me as I walked onward. Drawing close the beetles grew denser almost completely covering the ground in all but for where my feet fell, _they had already feasted_. Drawing ever nearer to the creatures that haunted my dreams, _no not dreams,_ standing unbothered as they were swarmed by the insects around us. Something deep inside me fled, _an awakening_ , as I realized in dulled shock that the beetles weren’t crawling _over_ them at all. The stench overwhelming I stepped around the familiar animals I’d driven past for years, _over and over on repeat_ , as the stream of matte black bugs continued to emerge from within them. This half forgotten scent snapped into focus as I looked closer to the standing, moving, _long dead_ , animals I’d driven countless disappointed tourists past. It was the same as the slaughter house I would walk behind on the way to school as a child. Despite their apparent vitality the lions were, _just as alive as I was_ , nothing really but maggot filled corpses.

Something I couldn’t name,  _ a purpose forced upon me _ , pulled me ever onward towards the darkest corner of the concrete prison. A small part of me seemed to scream to flee and never return to these obviously cursed grounds, _ my grave _ . I continued regardless,  _ I could do nothing else _ , almost a passenger in my own body, walking calmly through a cloud of the hide beetles as they took flight towards the rapidly darkening sky. A sense of calm swept through me as I emerged from the swarm of scavengers, _ of harbingers _ , drawing to a stop a flickering symbol, _ a sea _ l, embedded in the wall before me. To my dull surprise I recognized it, carved into the wall and filled with long aged blood, _ human _ , was the winding route I’d driven the bus for years, _ and how many was that, _ thinking back I couldn’t recall how many.

It was only a few right?  _ That isn’t true _ , I started 3 years ago,  _ but how many times before, _ it was when they updated the uniforms so it had to have been, that’s impossible, _ it wasn’t _ , no that wasn’t right… I jolted to awareness when I couldn’t remember. It’d been right after I finished high school wasn’t it? The slaughterhouse was shut down in 1958 so it had to have been… Wait that couldn’t be right it was 2018 and I’d only… A haze I’d never noticed lifted from over my thoughts,  _ what had they done that night _ , as my body continued to move despite the shock crashing through me. I screamed in the silence of mind as blended shadows of the fifty years I’d spent reliving the same period of my life on loop unspooled before me.

_ Oh _ , I thought as my knees bent to allow the corpse beetles to chew through the flesh of my left hand, _ I’ve been here the whole time haven't I _ ? 

_ I should be able to feel that _ , distantly floated across my mind as through no intention on my part my body drew from it’s crouch, my hand dripping old blood, stripped to the bone by the carrion feeders.

_ This is what I was here for since the beginning isn’t it? _

My bones scraped loudly through the ever present silence as they traced through the dried blood I remembered in a flash of faded terror as being my own.

_ I remember now. _

Naive, trusting, _ innocent, _ the night before opening day, following my new boss to see the lions just delivered that morning. Only to stare in shock at their disemboweled carcasses, surrounded and held down by the coworkers I’d been shared smiles and jokes with for days.

_ I never had a choice. _

Screaming my throat raw as they’d carved the same path over and over into my flesh until everything went blissfully dark. Only to wake up and begin my endless, oblivious, loops while they continued on around me until today. The end of it all.

_ They took that from me.,. _

I could only watch helpless as the seal was completely covered in starkly fresh blood, brightness growing until it hurt my eyes as much as I could while being a passenger in my own body.

_ I was always going to end like this.. _

Everything faded white, the ground shook, screams began, I managed one last thought before giving into the ever present darkness.

_ I hope they suffer. _


End file.
